Fortification

I will spend my Saturday morning doing overtime, writing about the death of the Southeast Alaska timber industry. On the side of light and goodness, though, I have excellent coffee and scrambled eggs with cream, arugula, basil, and nutmeg. I cook eggs in the spirit of MFK Fisher’s instructions in the 1942 “How to Cook a Wolf.” She says:

Scrambled eggs have been made, and massacred, for as long as people knew about pots and pans, no doubt.

And then the recipe. The essence: “This takes perhaps a half hour. It cannot be hurried.” I first discovered it in Africa, with malaria and limited rations, when we were really fighting the wolf, and it was one of those dishes I promised to make myself as soon as I got out.

I have almost never had scrambled eggs properly made outside my house. (The exception was someone else’s house in Valancay, France, and the quality of my eggs have rarely approached hers.) As much as I love my diner breakfasts, their eggs are compromised by the proprietors’ decision to serve me in a reasonable amount of time. So I make my own eggs at home, several days a week, before I descend into my harried, often lunchless reporting. They tempt me to another pace and fortify me.

And now to fight the wolf. He comes in different forms.

What would Shackleton have shopped for in Juneau?

Perhaps a bracelet is in order. What would Shackleton do?

I just read the part in Anne Fadiman’s “Ex Libris” where she discusses how Dr. James McIlroy asked the 22 men stranded in Antarctica with Ernest Shackleton what they would eat if they could have one dish. “Marmalade pudding with Devonshire cream,” said McIlroy himself. I don’t know what a marmalade pudding is but anything is good with Devonshire cream. “Syrup pudding,” said James. I was unaware of this English penchant for making puddings out of condiments. I’m ashamed to admit I did a similar thing with ketchup, as a child. “Devonshire dumpling with cream,” said Clark. I imagine the dumpling is made of Devonshire cream, too. I can relate. I spent a year living in a forest, and I have multiple volumes of food fantasies.

This section struck me because I awoke to a glorious day and a middling feeling of guilt. The guilt I experience is somewhat free-floating—it wanders around in my brain searching for justification, until settling happily to munch on something I had previously agreed to not worry about. In this case I realized that my morning coffee, eggs and bagel would require energy—electricity—which has just shot up in Juneau to an ill-placed avalanche over worse-placed power transmission towers. Thinking of my quintupled May bill, I considered microwaving tea and eating raw foods for breakfast. They would of course embark me on a healthier path, too. From now on, I would only eat whole, raw foods. I looked at the dried beans on my shelf. Could they be eaten raw?

Thank god, the coffee was next to the beans. It brought me back. The reality is that I am a (usually) unrepentant epicure, and a certain amount of electricity is necessary to support that. And it’s not so much—it’s not like I’m making elaborate marmalade puddings all day. I think I could shop for a barbeque this weekend, though.

Wolf cooties

A new sign at the Mendenhall Lake warns people to keep their dogs away from Romeo (not named as such) because they could get lice from him.

Juneau Empire has a story on the infestation. Apparently wolves all over Alaska have cooties now. Remarkably, state biologists are now intervening by leaving ivermectin-laced meat near wolf dens. I don’t understand why the intervention is appropriate, though—Are humans to blame for the lice? Did they perhaps come from dirty schoolchildren’s dogs?

I think ivermectin’s a pretty safe drug, at least. It’s a dewormer for dogs and cats and horses, but I took it as a cootie prophylactic for a year in a forest in Africa. It did what it was supposed to and I still have my liver.

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